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If you’ve built up balances on credit cards, you may want to check to see how these are settled by your payments. You see, it’s common practice for some card providers to use your monthly payment to pay off the cheapest debts on the card first and the more expensive debts last.

With Christmas fast approaching, we can all do with as many discount offers as we can get. The biggest voucher code sites to check are Myvouchercodes.co.uk, Vouchercodes.co.uk and Discountshoppinguk.co.uk. It's worth checking regularly as some of the best deals only last for 24 hours.

Just-out stats from Knight Frank reveal that landlords with student accommodation have made 13.5 per cent returns on average this past year. James Pullan at Knight Frank says, “Student property has delivered consistently healthy returns over the past five years.”

Catching up on my weekend press reading, I see the Telegraph looks at what's been happening to gold this year - up! - and where it will go next. The newspaper quotes Michael Widmer, an analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch who has been covering the gold market for a decade.

If you’re a buy-to-let investor, you’ll want to look at those areas that will see the most capital growth in the years ahead. The latest Halifax Town House Price Survey makes interesting reading for BTL investors and highlights a key investment principle.

Pick up any newspaper at the moment, and you will read at least one (and possibly more) advertisement from companies offering to help you to reclaim Payment Protection Insurance, which banks may have forced you to pay unfairly.

Many property buyers, investment and lifestyle alike, are looking towards the US, and especially Florida, and want to know when the market will bottom out. We’ve been listening to what the experts say and, the fact is, they just don’t know!

When I’m daydreaming about my ideal house, I spend a lot of time weighing up the pro’s and cons of having a pool. One on the one hand it would be great to just go for a swim when you feel like it, but on the other , they take up an enormous amount of space, and unless you go for a really expensive indoor version, only useable for part of the year. Now it seems there may be a solution, and , I need prevaricate no longer.

While working for Eastman Kodak in 1942, Harry Coover, attempted to create some material to make a transparent gun sight. It t wasn’t a success. The resulting compound was simply too sticky. The same thing happened again when Kodak scientists were working on polymers for aeroplane canopies, and it was then that Coover – soon to be Sir Harry Coover - realised they might have discovered something useful after all.

The National Landlords Association (NLA) has just published guidelines for would-be and ‘accidental’ landlords. Provide a proper tenancy agreement, usually an assured shorthold tenancy (AST) agreement that you and the tenant sign. This will outline the length of the tenancy, amount of rent, when it is to be paid, and deposit details.

I’ve just been reading that London estate agents Winkworth are saying that, in London, Haringey, Hendon, Tottenham, Barking, Wembley, Crystal Palace, Forest Hill, Streatham, Surrey Quays, Edgware, Walthamstow and West Norwood are the cheapest areas to buy property. But is the ‘cheapest’ the ‘best’?

If you are looking at an overseas property investment, do check out the supply and demand now and in the future. The supply-demand mix is, at least long-term, the main driver of the market. Take Turkey as an example.

You don’t have to spend too much time around internet forums and message boards to become a little disappointed with the behaviour of some users. Protected by a cloak of anonymity, many otherwise inconsequential and ineffectual individuals take on a persona which can cause serious problems of the owners of those forums and message boards.

I was astonished by one piece of news last week. Apparently, deaths following heart attacks in the UK have fallen by 50% in the past ten years. I was astonished for two reasons….firstly because that’s a massive improvement, and secondly because of how little coverage it got in the press.

I just read an article about www.famousScientists.org a site dedicated to what it says on the tin. The site contains a collection of more than 120 articles about the lives of famous scientists and inventors, together with pictures. It’s become the go-to destination for students, teachers, researchers and academics looking for information about scientists and their discoveries.

If you have an online business or are thinking about starting one, this could be of critical importance It’s always best to set up any business so that you have a ‘following wind’, and in this context that means directing your efforts to where the money is.